State likely won't add anyone to death row this year

FAYETTEVILLE  North Carolina is on track to not send any new inmates to death row for the first time since its current death penalty law took effect in 1977.

The state also hasn't executed anyone since 2006, and won't any time soon because of an unofficial moratorium on executions over what the role of doctors should be in administering lethal injections that remains unresolved after more than five years.

It's been over six years now since an execution has been carried out, so we're a state that still has the death penalty as a law but does not have executions as a reality, Ben David, district attorney in New Hanover County and president of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, told The Fayetteville Observer (http://bit.ly/TV2RW3).

North Carolina hasn't always been so ambivalent about executions. Juries in the state have sent 400 people to death row since the state's most recent death penalty law was passed in 1977. Forty-three of those people have been executed.

But the pace of new death sentences has slowed considerably. In 1999, 24 people were sentenced to death across North Carolina. In 2009, it dropped to two people, and this year, no new inmates will make it to death row.

Fewer people being sent to death row is a trend in many places as laws allowing for a life sentence without parole offer an alternative to a costly death penalty trial and appeals, said Ken Rose, a lawyer with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.

The Racial Justice Act is also slowing down executions by adding another layer of appeals. State officials said 147 of North Carolina's 155 death row inmates are appealing their sentences under the law, which allows them to try and prove there was racial bias in their murder trials and have death sentences commuted to life in prison.

But death penalty supporters said they expect executions will resume eventually.

The state expects to win the pending case over how to administer lethal injection next year, said N.C. House Majority Leader Paul Stam, R-Wake. The eight death row inmates that don't have a Racial Justice Act claims will immediately start using up any remaining appeals.

If the lawsuit is resolved in favor of the state, the more than 140 Racial Justice Act claims will then need to be dealt with, a process that will take up to four years, said Stam, who was a critic of the act and help get changes passed that supporters of the original law say waters it down substantially